Environmental Change - Homogenization of Landscapes

Explain the evolution of uniform urban landscapes; the effects of common commercial activity, structures, styles of construction and infrastructure.

As globalization becomes more prominent, Transnational Corporations have more opportunities to expand to other countries. This causes the phenomenon called the homogenization of landscapes, which is the process of places becoming the same. Before globalization, different places have their own styles, so when outsiders pay a visit to the place, it is easy to know the history of the place.

As an example, in Great Britain, Cambridge is named as "King Clone" of UK. The name clone towns are given to towns inundated with chain stores with no sign of history. Chain stores are indirectly forcing out small local shops in towns across the UK, 4 out of 10 of Britain's high streets are undergoing this phenomenon.

Clone towns may be seen as signs of foreign investment, but it may cause detrimental effects too. Some of the effects include:

• loss of small independent businesses
• reduction of consumer choice
• chain stores' exploitation of suppliers
• identity loss of towns 
• increase in average price of goods and services 

International Outsourcing - Offshoring

Global Services Location Index (GSLI)

I found this index really interesting because of the three components that it takes into account for: financial attractiveness, people skills and availability, and business environment. This index informs companies which countries are suitable for offshoring services. 

I have always thought that companies only consider the cost of production, so if a country with an extremely low cost of labor, such as Bangladesh, the company would prefer to go there than other country. However, with previous knowledge that Bangladesh has an extremely low cost of labor due to the history of Nike, I was surprised that Bangladesh wasn't even in the Top 25 of GSLI. This may be due to the low people skills and availability and business environment in comparison to other countries. 

It was also surprising to see India being the leader in the GSLI, with 3.11 financial attractiveness, 2.76 people skills and availability and 1.14 business environment and United Kingdom being the 16th, which is a relatively high ranking. 


Do these top offshoring countries see this as positive or negative? 

ASEAN

PH retail industry seen to grow in ASEAN integration

Source: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/03/20/14/ph-retail-industry-seen-grow-asean-integration

Summary of Article: 

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is implementing a regional economic integration next year. This change is said to positively affect the retail industry of the Philippines, allowing foreign retailers to come to the Philippines while Filipino retailers can expand to ASEAN countries. Sy-Coson said, “I think there will be growth in the retail industry.”

My Thoughts:

This economic integration will undoubtedly help the Philippines economy; these foreign ASEAN companies generally have high revenues, so the Philippines government can earn tax income. This will also open the market to new varieties of products, increasing consumer preferences, which will most likely increase the demand of goods. However, with an increase in competition between foreign and local retailers, the foreign retailers may become more dominant due to their advantages of economies of scale. The local retailers may also lose incentives to compete if the foreign retailers get too competitive.

Sociocultural Exchange - Starbucks

Choose either the concept of cultural diffusion (voluntary/consented change in culture) or cultural imperialism (enforced/pressured change in culture) and using specific examples explain how transnational corporations either intentionally or unintentionally spread consumerism through your chosen concept.


Cultural Diffusion is the process in which a particular culture is adapted by not only the original population, but also other populations. This process has become more and more prominent due to an improvement in technology, which had increased accessibility of information anywhere around the world. Transnational Corporations are actively taking advantage of the increase in accessibility to diffuse their own "culture" onto consumers to promote consumerism (idea that encourages people to purchase goods and services). An apotheosis of a transnational corporation that does so is Starbucks Coffee.

Companies are selling their own sets of ideas, and not necessarily products. These sets of ideas are what fabricates the companies' own culture. The images that Starbucks associates itself with is an environment of nice ambiance, a forum of ideas and discussions, working place. Starbucks has made its consumers to believe that its coffee worths more than it costs and moreover, its coffee is a necessity not a desire. Such as that Starbucks coffee is necessary when one works, due to Starbucks' imposed image of "work". Starbucks is the perfect place to meet with one's colleagues because of its image of a "forum". 

Other than imposing positive associations, Starbucks has also convinced its consumers that it's okay to consume its products because they're ethically responsible by having fair trade, and that it aims to provide positive impacts to its neighbors. However, all these praised images of Starbucks are all in use to maximize profits. The more positive the consumers think the company is, the more they will be willing to pay. Starbucks has also quietly diffused the Western culture to the lives of Asian countries, coffee has slowly become a substitution of tea in Asian countries, which further encourages the Asian population to increase consumption.

Starbucks currently operates in over 60 countries with more than 20,000 stores worldwide. As seen through the numbers, Starbucks is extremely successful at cultural diffusing; more and more consumers are increasing their purchasing quantity.  Starbucks has also gained its ground through its ubiquitous presence over the other competing coffee shops, thus manipulating that Starbucks is the way to go. 

With the increase in transnational corporation's cultural diffusion, the people around the world will be spending more money on goods and services. This is because companies now impose cultural ideas to manipulate the consumers to believe that there are only benefits when consumers purchase, no drawbacks. 

Pros and Cons of Globalization

Pros

• Increase in communications among friends and families around the world. 
• ex: Facebook and Skype
• Decrease in production costs for companies, they're able to increase their profits
• ex: Nike main production line is at Bangladesh instead of at United States
• Information travels rapidly, it can become a platform to raise awareness for causes such as racism
• charityintelligence.ca
• freerice.com (raises awareness for world hunger and gather help)
• Increase in demand of products, increase in trade amongst countries. This helps the overall economic growth and development of countries.
• From 1962 to 1989, Korea's GDP has grown 8% every year
• Availability of foreign products around the world

Cons

• Small and less well-known companies cannot compete with famous companies
• ex: local fast food companies is unable to compete with McDonalds
• Labors in developing countries lose job opportunities because companies look for lower cost labors in LEDCs
• Chinese companies settling in the Philippines causes the lower-classes of China to lose job opportunities. 
• Leads to exploitation of LEDC labors and environment
• Nike's sweatshops violates human rights, disregards their working environment and their working wage
• Improvement in communication (shrinking of the world decreases) allows intrusion of bullying or other forms of negative interactions
• Dominant countries are allowed more power, because less economically developed countries fight for connections to trade with dominant countries
• Loss of cultural identity, with the rapid trading of information around the world, people are more likely to assimilate with another culture. 
• Western ideas are becoming more dominant than Eastern ideas

Characteristics And Spatial Distribution Of An Earthquake

Explain the characteristics and spatial distribution of the following hazards using at least two  examples. [10 marks]

Every year the National Earthquake Information Center records an average of 20,000 earthquakes, however, this number still excludes the earthquakes that are too weak to be recorded. The natural hazard of earthquake can be caused by other hazards such as volcanic eruptions; however, the usual cause for earthquakes is still the shifting of the earth's plates. These plates include the mantle and the crust of the earth, the boundaries of the plates are formed by faults, and is the most quintessential locations of earthquakes. Tension is created as these plates move, the crust breaks as the tension reaches its maximum and releases energy in the form of waves, which eventually is the earthquake. The two more well-known earthquakes are the Sichuan Earthquake in 2008 and the Bohol Earthquake in 2013, which will be elaborated to demonstrate the characteristics and spatial distribution of earthquakes. 

Figure 1.

The Sichuan Earthquake in China killed around 70,000, 380,000 injured, 18,000 missing, caused a displacement of 9~12m and landslides. The earthquake is reported to occur along Longmenshan Fault as outlined by recorded shocks in Figure 1. The Longmenshan locates at border line of Indo-Australian Plate and Eurasian Plate, and is roughly in the middle of China. The earthquake happened in two stages as the Longmenshan fault broke twice, the first was around seven yards and the second was around four yards. As said by China Earthquake Administration, the earthquake took place for around 120 seconds (2 minutes), with the first 80 seconds being the strongest, with the most energy release. It was recorded to have an average speed of 3.1 km/s, in the direction of Northeast, and an estimation of 300km rupture range. The Shichuan Earthquake was said to be 8.0 Ms, which is a magnitude of an earthquake that only occurs once every five to ten years and can have detrimental effects to the surrounding communities. This earthquake also had over 42,000 after shocks in the region. Despite the damage it has done to the surrounding, this destructive earthquake was surprisingly not precisely predicted; however, it was concluded after it was actually an unpredictable earthquake in terms of size, place and time. 

Another well-known earthquake is the recent Bohol Earthquake that occurred in the Central Visayas, Philippines. The epicenter was at Bohol, but the action was felt throughout Visayas and Mindanao. This was a tectonic earthquake and discovered to be occurred in a previously undiscovered fault line, now named as - North Bohol Fault (Figure 2).

Figure 2 - Box outline of North Bohol Fault

This earthquake is recorded to be 7.2 Mw, with a depth of 12km and had a detrimental affect including: 200+ deaths, 8 missing, 1000 injured, 73,000 structures damaged and 14,500 destroyed. The magnitude of the earthquake can be illustrated with the description of its energy released being equivalent to 32 Hiroshima bombs, and is the strongest in 23 years. The earthquake lasted for about 34 seconds, and had around 4,000 aftershocks. The UP National Institute of Geological Sciences said that due to the lack of knowledge of the multitude of the Philippines' faults, the earthquakes can't be precisely predicted; as a result, the Bohol earthquake wasn't specifically identified before its occurrence. 

As seen from the examples of Sichuan and Bohol Earthquakes, earthquakes often are located at faults in the countries. Some faults are already discovered while others like the North Bohol Fault wouldn't be discovered until an earthquake happens. The two chosen earthquakes were both in the strong earthquake category, with a magnitude over 7.0. These earthquakes caused detrimental effects, yet couldn't be accurately predicted. After the main shock, there were still several after shocks that alarmed the citizens and may have caused injuries. Furthermore, it is evident that due to movements of plates (thrust plates in these cases), cause earthquakes.

Why is it that the rich get richer and the poor stay poor?

The main reason to why the rich get richer and the poor stay poor is because of our human nature of selfishness. Ever since historic times, there have been the 'superior' population and then the 'inferior' population, the colonizers and the colonized respectively. The colonizers had power over the others and could do whatever they want to exploit the locals. Having to experience the ability of power, the superiors are not able to give up what they have, even if this means helping to make the others' life better; they feel no obligation in anyway to do so, because the others are 'inferior'. From this, disparity is created.

Contemporarily, the rich such as the owners of big multinational corporations may own more than double of that of the poor, they still are not willing to forgo their success. We may see powerful and wealthy people like Bill Gates as philanthropists,donating to the needies, but it still does not help the poor to rack up their statuses. The money isn't enough to provide a perfect environment like they themselves grew up in, education, food, shelter, family and more. Furthermore, the money that these wealthy people donate may be just a small portion of their total wealth because they want to keep their luxurious life.

It is impossible for one to be truly altruistic and forgo all their wealth because it is true that some had worked harder than others. It is also that people were born into families, and if the family doesn't have the required resources, it is extremely hard for one to climb up the social status. Such as that if I were born into a family without any access to education, I wouldn't be able to get a decent job in the future, which leads me back to the same life of lacking necessities because I don't earn enough to go further.